Compare prices across countries
What one medicine costs in each market, normalised to the same daily dose and the same currency, on one map. The hard part is not the number — it is knowing when two numbers are actually comparable, and this screen is built to tell you.
- 1
Search for anything that identifies the medicine
Prices accepts the same inputs as Explore: a substance (
atorvastatin), a brand (Ozempic), an ATC code (C10AA05), or a pack identifier. Whatever you give it is resolved to a substance and its ATC class, because that is what makes a cross-country comparison possible at all — the brand in one country is a different brand in the next. - 2
Read the three counters
Above the map: Markets is where the medicine is registered, Priced is where we hold a price, and DDD-comparable is where that price could be normalised to a defined daily dose. The third number is usually the smallest, and it is the only one the map gradient is drawn from.
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Check the basis column before comparing anything
Every row states how its price was derived. Only
per DDDrows are directly comparable with each other.
The four bases
| Basis | Means | Comparable? |
|---|---|---|
| per DDD | The price was normalised to one WHO defined daily dose. This is the comparable figure and the one the map is shaded by. | Yes |
| per unit | We have a price per tablet, capsule or dose, but could not get from there to a daily dose. | Only against other per-unit rows, and only if the strengths match |
| per pack | We have a price for a box, and the strength or pack size could not be parsed out of the product text. | No — a cheap pack may be a small pack |
| — | The medicine is registered here but we hold no price. | No |
Amber rows are priced, not comparable
A market shown in amber has a real published price and a real number in the table. It is not on the gradient because the number is not on the same footing as the blue ones. Reading an amber per-pack price as if it were a per-dose price is the single easiest way to draw a wrong conclusion from this screen.
Why a medicine may have no per-DDD figure anywhere
Normalising to a daily dose needs two things: a mass-based WHO DDD for the ATC class, and enough structure in the product record to work out how much substance is in the pack. Many classes have no mass-based DDD at all — topicals, combination products, anything dosed by volume or by unit of activity. When that is the case the console says so in a note under the table rather than silently falling back.
Which markets we hold prices for
These are the markets where a price question has a real answer. Others may show a registration without a price, because no public price artefact exists or we do not yet have access to it.
- CHSwitzerland
- USUnited States
- FRFrance
- ITItaly
- ESSpain
- BEBelgium
- NONorway
- PLPoland
- CZCzechia
- FIFinland
- ISIceland
Coverage is a licensing question, not a technical one
Germany, the United Kingdom, Denmark and Sweden are not on that list because their price data is behind a paid licence, a credentialled feed or a data request — not because the pipeline cannot read it. Japan is registered and searchable but has no comparable per-dose price today. Canada publishes no single national price at all.
Three ways the comparison can still mislead
- Different points in the supply chain. The US figure is an acquisition cost — what a pharmacy paid. Most European figures are retail or reimbursement prices — what the patient or the insurer is charged. Those are not the same quantity, and when a comparison mixes them the console adds a note saying so. Do not read a low US number as a cheap US market.
- Medians, from a sample. Each market's figure is the median across the products we hold for that substance there, and large result sets are capped. For a substance with hundreds of generics, the median is a fair summary but not a quote.
- One currency, one date. Everything is converted to USD at a single exchange rate, stamped under the table. A comparison across two currencies is partly a statement about the FX rate on that day.
Reimbursement is a separate question
A green reimbursed marker means at least one product for that substance is on that country's reimbursement list. It says nothing about what a specific patient pays, which depends on the scheme, the indication and the co-payment rules. Treat it as “in the system”, not as “free”.
Reading the notes
The lines under the table are generated per query, not boilerplate. They are the place the console admits what it could not do — no mass-based DDD on this ATC, could not resolve an ATC, product set capped at a sample, prices mixing supply-chain points. If a result looks surprising, the explanation is usually already written there.
The same thing over the API
GET /v1/markets/overview?q=… returns byte-for-byte what this screen renders, including the per-market basis, the price_type, the product counts and the notes. See the markets family.